Mumbai: It was a case of roadside theft.
Twenty-three-year-old Samina Shaikh was out shopping for Eid when she realised her purse had been slit and cash amounting to Rs 64,000 that she had withdrawn from a nearby bank had been stolen. Shaikh did not notice if it was one person or more but could recall the presence of several young children in the crowded market road of the Shivaji Nagar slums that evening.
“They could be 16 or 14 or even 11, it is difficult to tell. They were all so young,” she said. The theft took place on March 7 and Shaikh approached the Shivaji Nagar police station on the same evening. The police, however, did not budge until local leaders intervened. The FIR was lodged only on March 9.
What could have been a case of theft not unlike the many registered every day across the country then led to a series of events exposing police brutality, blatant casteism, and the state’s apathy towards children belonging to marginalised identities.
The police initially rounded up eight children, all between 11 and 15 years of age. Three of them belonged to the Wadar community and the rest were from the Pardhi tribe. Both communities are highly criminalised and exploited, and largely lead migratory lives without proper shelter and citizens’ rights. Most of those detained were girls. One 20-year-old woman was rounded up too.
Shaikh, although not entirely sure, said one boy’s face looked “familiar” to her. He was the oldest, around 16. The police roughed up the boy and his friend, who was even younger. One of them even confessed to their mistake but they were soon released. Their parents came by and were made to pay an amount to the cops.
The other kids – all from Mumbai’s most impoverished M East ward, located on the northern edge of the metropolis – were kept in the police station and say they were brutalised. Bringing young children to a police station, even when they are in conflict with the law, is prohibited.
‘Took turns to beat me’
The 20-year-old woman who was held by police told The Wire that each one of them were beaten on their palms and feet with a belt and bamboo stick. “They wanted us to accept a crime that none of us were involved in,” she said.
Her 11-year-old brother appeared to have been the worst affected. “My hands and legs were tied up and they took turns to beat me up,” the boy, who is visibly frail, shared. One of the younger girls, around 13 years old, who had a few coins hidden in her inners, was made to open them and show the coins to the gathered policemen.
Police also hurled casteist slurs at the children – it must be stressed that they all belonged to the highly criminalised Pardhi tribe. “The constable kept calling us thieves and kept invoking our caste while beating us. He said Pardhis are all thieves,” one of the younger children said.
While the police let off all the girls at around midnight, the young boy was detained at the police station for close to 24 hours. He said he was hungry and sore from all the beatings.
The 20-year-old had been detained when she was carrying her three-year-old niece. She said that as the baby’s aunt, two siblings and cousins were beaten up, the baby sat unattended without food or water for close to eight hours. Later at midnight, the police allowed the girls to leave. “We walked over 2 kilometres at around midnight to reach home,” the 20-year-old said.
The boy could finally be rescued only after the girls reached home and alerted a local social worker, Shubham Kothari, about the police’s excesses. Kothari mobilised his network and information soon reached the Child Welfare Committee’s suburban division and CHILDLINE India Foundation (CIF), a nodal agency of the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, involved in rescuing children in unsafe conditions. Child Safety Forum, a collective of NGOs, jumped in too.
Rescuers arrive
Neha Pednekar, a seasoned supervisor at the CHILDLINE says when she reached the police station, she found the 11-year-old boy on the third floor of the police station, terrified and hungry. “His feet were swollen and he was unable to walk,” she said. Pednekar took charge of the situation and rescued the child. She, along with the boy and the five other girls headed to the municipal corporation-run Shatabdi Hospital close by, even as the police persuaded her to not “escalate the matter”.
“While the police brutality towards such young children had already shocked me, I was further appalled by the police’s attitude. The police truly believed they had done no wrong and illegally detaining children and brutalising them was the only way to solve a crime,” Pednekar said. Pednekar and other rights activists have ever since been demanding an FIR be registered against the four policemen and a lady constable who had brutalised the children. While this FIR has not been registered at all, an FIR, naming these children, was registered as soon as CHILDLINE and CWC intervened.
The medical report, accessed by The Wire, confirms the violence. The forensic report says they were beaten up with a “blunt object”. The reports by the Probation Officer and District Child Protection Officer also state that the children were physically assaulted, verbally assaulted and denied food and water. The children, who after being rescued from the police station, were kept at a children’s home under the CWC’s care to protect them from further police pressure, finally returned home on March 19. The police tried every tactic in the book to squeeze out favourable testimonies from them. The CWC staff said that they had to push back in at least two occasions and send the police back.
‘Coercion’
The 20-year-old, who continued to live in the slum, however, did not have much by way of protection. The same men who had brutally beaten her came to her residence and forced her to sign a pre-typed statement. “They didn’t read it out to me. When I opposed, they made my younger sister (a minor) sign it as me,” she told The Wire. The police in all their aggression, however, missed a crucial bit. The 20-year-old is unlettered and does not know how to write her name or sign. She uses her thumb impression.
Even as the younger kids stayed in the CWC’s care and protection, this young woman continued her fight against the police. Meanwhile, multiple complaints were made to the Maharashtra State Child Rights Commission (MSCRC) and the young woman was finally summoned before the commission.
The chairperson Susieben Shah had also summoned the erring policemen, and Deepak Pandey, the special inspector general of police (prevention of crimes against women and children). Pandey, however, did not turn up at the commission as a respondent but went as a part of the panel.
An image of the hearing chaired by MSCRC chairperson Susieben Shah. Deepak Pandey is in orange. Photo: X/@shahsusieben
The case of Deepak Pandey
When the young woman reached the commission with her mother, she was taken aback to see Pandey sit alongside Shah and conduct the hearing. Pandey, from the very onset, was aggressive, and talked down anyone who pointed fingers at the errant policemen.
When lawyers and rights activists asked pointed questions as to why children were even taken to the police station in clear violation of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015, Pandey tried to deflect the conversation by talking about the children’s education.
When the CWC chairperson Sunil Shirishkar objected to Pandey’s tone and language, Pandey went to an extent of blaming the CWC for “not doing his job”. When Pednekar told the commission that she was the one who rescued the young boy from Shivaji Nagar Police station, Pandey screamed at her for being at the police station in the first place. Shah did very little to control Pandey. The young woman broke down during the hearing.
Shah finally issued an order directing the police to complete the investigation within seven days and submit a detailed report.
A 1999- batch IPS officer, Pandey has twice been suspended from his post in the past. First, for allegedly torturing his wife, and later, in connection with a sex scandal in 2008. Pandey was accused of sexually exploiting a teenage girl. The then home minister of Maharashtra R.R. Patil had announced his suspension on the floor of assembly.
As noted earlier, he is now tasked with prevention of crimes against women and children.
